Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?

1. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson - A history of technological progress and predictions about the future. Obviously a lot of repetitive jobs will be automated, but Brynjolfsson posits a few interesting potential solutions for the future, such as Negative Income Tax.

2. Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez - A first person memoir about an aqui-hire by Facebook / Twitter. Interesting to learn about the differences in corporate culture and how Ycombinator works behind the scenes.

3. Economics in One Lesson: by Henry Hazlitt - Explains classical economics in a way where I now can understand what politicians are talking about.

4. The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory by John Seabrook - How pop music is made. It's surprising how assembly-line it actually is, and how many people work behind the scenes. Google "topline writer," for one.

5. Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton - A third-person account of Twitter's origin and subsequent CEO-shuffling. Wow, I can see why the board would want to replace Jack and Ev--they are not management material, which is why it's perplexing that Jack is back (unless it's board politics, again).

6. Disrupted by Dan Lyons - a memoir by a 50-something writer (who now writes for HBO's Startup - he wrote White Hat / Black Hat - the one where Ross had the tequila bottle incident) trying to deal with the culture of a young goofy startup culture in Boston. Another corporate culture book that was interesting, and made me glad I don't have to deal with office politics. Lyons is kind of jerk who doesn't realize it, though.

7. Steve Jobs - by Walter Isaacson. However, it's missing a lot from the "NeXT" time, surprisingly. If you're interested in Chrisann Brennan's perspective, check out her The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs--though be forewarned it's pretty whiney and I really just skimmed over most of it. Her perspective on why he was attracted to Laurene Powell is interesting, though.

8. Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance - It's an authorized biography, so there's that, but it's still an interesting read.

My favourite book this year: Thinking Fast and Slow. Well worth the hype.

One of my favorites this year, particularly in non-fiction, is In Search of Stupidity by Merril R. Chapman [0]. It's an amazing look at the history of microcomputers and the ensuing software market with a particular eye on what made certain companies fail.

Chapman worked for sometime in sales and later product management at MicroPro (WordStar), Ashton-Tate, Novell, etc... so it has quite an "inside-look" feel and the subject matter sounds like it's treated fairly.

The narrative is quite the page-turner for a non-fiction book, but my only qualm with it is that Chapman can be pretty sophomoric and unnecessarily gratuitous in his lampooning and shaming of business leaders or strategies which flirts with undermining the otherwise really insightful analysis.

It's a little dated (Microsoft is still king and Apple the scrappy underdog), but I think it's an important context for anyone following tech today.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Search-Stupidity-Twenty-Marketing-Dis...

Here is my full bookshelf: http://www.kirubakaran.com/books-read.html

Books Read in 2016:

1. The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge - Poundstone, William

2. My Brain is Open: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos - Schechter, Bruce

3. One Summer: America, 1927 - Bryson, Bill

4. The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1) - Liu, Cixin

5. The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit - Godin, Seth

6. At Home: A Short History of Private Life - Bryson, Bill

7. Kings of Kings (Hardcore History, #56-58) - Carlin, Dan

8. Blueprint for Armageddon (Hardcore History #50-55) - Carlin, Dan

9. Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal - Klaff, Oren

10. William Shakespeare: The World as Stage - Bryson, Bill

11. So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love - Newport, Cal

12. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles - Pressfield, Steven

13. In a Sunburned Country - Bryson, Bill

14. Cannery Row - Steinbeck, John

15. Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers - Weinberg, Gabriel

16. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Newport, Cal

17. Starship Troopers - Heinlein, Robert A.

18. No Touch Monkey!: And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late - Halliday, Ayun

Strongly recommend "Art of Learning" There is an interview with Waitkzkin (whose chess talents were chronicled in "Searching for Bobby Fischer" book and movie) in "Learning about Learning" http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2009/01/21/learning-about-le... that gives you a good perspective of his ability to engage in self-debugging: I blogged about this in http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2010/03/13/recurring-problems-h...